


Look After You

by eternaleponine



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-16
Updated: 2012-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-12 06:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint gets a heavy dose of some alien nitrous oxide, and Natasha gets stuck with babysitting duty while he's higher than a kite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look After You

CRASH.

The sound was loud enough to make the door rattle in its frame and the mirror knock against the wall. Natasha froze, listening for sounds of pain, although human bodies usually made more of a thud when they hit the ground.

Instead, she heard a giggle, followed by an, "Oops! Sorry!"

She was going to kill him. If he didn't manage to kill himself, she was going to choke the life out of Clint Barton, and she wouldn't even be sorry. (Okay, that was a lie. She would regret it once her annoyance abated. But right now, the idea of wringing his neck was pretty appealing.)

She'd left him alone for five minutes. _Five_. She'd thought he'd be okay for that long, unsupervised while she took a quick shower. Obviously she'd been wrong. She wrapped herself in a towel and padded out of the bathroom to make sure that he hadn't destroyed anything valuable.

There was a sheet of plywood (or something similar) on the floor, and a chair that it had taken out on its way down from the rafters. She looked up, knowing exactly what she would find, so her face was carefully blank. And there he was, perched on a beam, smiling sheepishly down at her. "It fell," he explained.

_No shit, Sherlock._

"I think you should probably come down from there," she said. Never mind she couldn't quite figure out how he'd gotten _up_ in the first place. "Before you do any more damage."

"If I jump, will you catch me?" His grin widened, and he held his arms out to her like a small child looking for a hug.

 _Which is_ , Natasha reminded herself, _pretty much what he is._

It had all started earlier, when they, along with the rest of the Avengers, had been sent out to deal with a "disturbance". The disturbance had not been human in nature, and as part of its defense arsenal, it had employed some sort of gas that seemed to act much like nitrous oxide. They'd all been exposed, but the gas rose, and so Clint had breathed in more of it than anyone.

They'd all spent a little while giggling at everything, including the target's inevitable apparent self-destruction, but had more or less sobered up once they'd been breathing clean air for a little while. Clint, on the other hand, was still high as a kite, despite medical's reassurances that it would wear off... eventually.

She'd gotten stuck with him because, at least with him, it seemed to have the less-than-awesome side effect of being something like a truth serum. Or, at the very least, it lowered his inhibitions to the point where if it popped into his head, it came out of his mouth, and most people didn't really want to hear the pure, unadulterated truth about anything, especially themselves.

Black Widow, master spy and assassin, had been designated Least Likely To Kill Hawkeye, and now she was, in a word, babysitting. They were in a S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse, some kind of industrial-type loft that was equipped with rafters strong enough to hold a man who was apparently convinced he was a bird, and he was still staring down at her expectantly, arms out.

"Since I'm pretty sure you're incapable of metaphor right now, no," she said. "I won't catch you. Come down."

"Damn," he said. "I was hoping if you reached up to catch me you'd lose your towel."

If she didn't kill him, she was going to kill _someone_ for this.

"Come down, Clint," she said, managing to keep her voice level even though she wanted to reach out and throttle him. She waited until he had turned his back to make his way down from his perch before checking her towel to make sure that it was secure. 

Once he was safely on the floor, she took him by the hand and led him to the couch, sitting him down and putting a remote in his hand. "I'm going to go finish my shower. You are going to stay here. The only movement you are allowed to make is pushing the buttons to make the TV work. Do you understand?"

He nodded, but seemed to be fighting back a smirk. She didn't ask what he thought was so funny, she just turned her back and began to walk away, counting 3... 2... 

"Are you sure I shouldn't come with you? You can keep an eye on me better if I'm nearby."

_Wait for it..._

"And you might need help washing your back."

She was glad that he couldn't see her face, because it was hard not to laugh. "Don't push your luck, Birdboy," she said, shutting – and locking – the bathroom door behind her.

Despite the fact that she thought that he might possibly have listened when she told him not to move, she made sure to keep the shower short, tugging on a pair of jeans and a tank top, her hair in damp waves as she padded back out to join him.

Clint whistled when he saw her, and she reached out and swatted him upside the head. He stuck out his lower lip, rubbing the back of his head. She hadn't hit him _that_ hard; he was just being dramatic. "Ow," he said. "That wasn't very nice."

Natasha rolled her eyes. "I know you're addled right now, but that's no excuse for acting like a construction worker or oversexed teenage boy." She waited for a response, but none was forthcoming. He was too busy pouting. "Did you find anything on?"

"No," he sulked. "I was going to look at the movies but _someone_ told me not to move."

"Go ahead. I'll make some popcorn."

His face lit up then like a switch had been flipped. "Popcorn!" He bounced up to find a movie, and she hoped that it was something that they 1. hadn't seen a million times before, and 2. could both stand. She hated romantic comedies, and he didn't have the attention span for foreign films ("If I wanted to read, I would find a book!"). Action was usually the best choice, but then sometimes they just got annoyed at how the people in the movie did everything wrong. Sometimes it was funny, but sometimes it put them both on edge.

The last thing she needed was to have some movie trip a land mine in his head when he was in this state.

But he picked a non-romantic comedy, and yes, they'd seen it before, but they both liked it. She leaned over the back of the couch and put the bowl of popcorn in his lap, then quickly pressed a kiss to the back of his head. "All better," she whispered, apologizing for the slap (even though he'd deserved it). She just caught the smile that flickered across his face before it disappeared behind a fistful of popcorn.

He couldn't sit still, squirming around and talking almost continually (often with his mouth full). She finally got fed up, and when the popcorn was gone, she moved over to the end of the couch, leaning against the arm, and then tugged him down until his head was in her lap. 

She sunk her fingers into his hair, raking his scalp gently with her nails and massaging down his neck. She felt him relax, felt the keyed up tension ebb away slightly. For the first time in hours, he was completely quiet, completely still. 

He turned his head to look up at her, opened his mouth to say something, but she just shook her head, stroking his temple. "Just watch the movie," she told him. He kept looking at her, though, a line forming between his eyebrows. She smoothed it away with her fingertips. "It's okay," she murmured. "It's all right."

Clint looked up at her for a moment more, then turned his attention back to the screen, his hand resting lightly on her knee. Just resting, nothing more.

Natasha let out a soft sigh. Maybe no one would die today after all.


End file.
